UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

UPDATE 12 Apr 2011

It seems the marriage is now over.

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11 Dec 2009

In August 2006, Ian Young, 27, a perfectly straight man from Derby (United Kingdom) walked into Starbucks at the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), and found the only seat available was next to what seemed to be a beautiful 33-year old woman.

That woman turned out to be a man with a very masculine name: Mohammed Fazdil Min Bahari, who prefers to be called Fatine, a make-up artist who had been disowned by her own mother.

To be more precise, he’s a “pre-op transsexual“, which can be defined as:

… a woman in living in the body of a man; and has breasts (through taking female hormones and/or breast implants), and male genitalia. In most cases, he lives full time as a woman.

Note: in Fatine’s case, she’d been taking hormones since the age of 17, yet isn’t considering gender reassignment surgery due to the risks involved. Well I guess anything can happen on one of those power exam tables.

Ian and Fatine got married in a civil partnership ceremony in the UK in May 2009.

Now she is Malaysia’s most infamous trans woman, transgender, tranny, TS or shemale, because due to immigration complications she could be deported to her home country and prosecuted because homosexuality is illegal there.

To Ian, a property maintenance company owner, Fatine is, for all intents and purposes a real woman:

I know it is hard for people to understand but I love Fatine. I feel lucky to have met such a caring, wonderful person. It doesn’t matter to me that she is a transsexual – it’s the person she is inside that I care about and love. I can’t contemplate the idea of us not being together. I look at her and see a beautiful woman.

He described how Fatine was upfront about her sexuality the first time they met:

We started talking … when she got up to leave I asked for her number. That’s when she said she might not be what I was looking for and that she was actually a transsexual. I just said, ‘Oh’ and blushed with embarrassment. But for some reason I wasn’t put off. I’d never met a transsexual before and my instinct was that I liked Fatine. Even if it was just as friends, I wanted to meet her again. It just felt right. My first impression in the coffee shop was that Fatine was a woman. If she happened to have male sex organs then that was some sort of birth defect. I never thought of her as a man.

2 days after the first meeting, they met again and kissed. They then met two more times before deciding they were in love with each other.

In October 2007, they commenced a “physical relationship.”

In December 2008, Fatine traveled to the UK on a tourist visa, which turned into a long-term stay. However, Fatine’s Leave To Remain Visa was rejected in September 2009 because of an “incorrect passport photo.” A second application was also not approved because Fatine’s tourist visa had expired – and she was told to return to Malaysia.

His MP tried to help, but to no avail, as a UK immigration spokesman said:

This applicant entered the UK as a visitor. The rules are clear that a visitor must leave the UK within six months but may reapply for a new visa from their country of origin.

But now that this case has been making news around the world: if Fatine returned to Malaysia, what would happen?

Malaysia’s Immigration Department Director-General Abdul Rahman Othman was glaringly ominous:

The penalty imposed on Fatine may be more severe than the two-year passport issuance deferment as he has brought great shame upon us.

As for Fatine, she was quoted to have said:

I have received a lot of negative e-mails and comments from people, some even accusing me of insulting the Malaysian government. I feel frustrated that people did not understand that I went to the UK only because I wanted to be with the man I love. I cannot do that in Malaysia. I am so frightened to go back. I am worried for my safety. The portrayal of our our love story by a Malay tabloid is inaccurate – it was never our intention to insult the Malay community. The tabloid also put my father’s name in the article, which was unnecessary and my mother is now afraid to leave the house. I don’t know what to do – my family has already disowned me. I’ve spent hours on the phone asking for forgiveness. I love them but I can’t change what has happened. I understand that Malays are very traditional and that people like me aren’t acceptable, but I hope things would cool down eventually.

Source
The Sun (UK), 27 Nov 2009

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